Friends Without Benefits

Yesterday we talked about best friends. I think it might be good to continue with that conversation. Let’s talk about our friends. We all have at least one friend, at least I hope we do. I think it’s important to have friends.

It’s also important to have friends that love and support you. Friends that respect your boundaries and your choices. Friends you can count on to have your back when things get tough.

It’s also possibly true that we’ve all had our fair share of fair weather friends, fake friends, and people we thought were our friends who betrayed our trust or treated us badly. That’s the nature of a social life. There are best friends, good friends, bad friends, work friends, and of course I cannot forget to mention Facebook friends, or the people we call friends because we interact with them on social media.

Now, what if… and this is a RADICAL thought.

What if we got rid of all the fair weather friends, fake friends, and bad friends. In one day… what if we just dumped them. We could ghost them… I think that’s acceptable. Or we could take a stand and text them and say… “Look. This friend thing we are playing at just isn’t working for me. Sorry. Have a nice life. Bye.”

And then what if, after we did that, we washed our hands of them for real and lost their phone numbers and scrubbed them from our social media pages…

But wait… there’s MORE…

What if we made a point to tell all of our good friends, our best and true friends how much we appreciate them. We could call them and say, “Hey. I really appreciate you! Thank you for being you! My life is better because you are in it.” We could share something to that effect on their social media pages… or send an email… or a letter or a card.

I’m thinking this will take some of the sting out of the previous thing of dumping people. And it will reinforce the friendships that are important to our well being.

But wait… there’s ONE MORE RADICAL THING

What if we also make it a point to tell ourselves how much we appreciate us. Like… really take the time to say “Hey. I’m here for you. I love you. Sometimes you disappoint me, sometimes I disappoint you, but I will always have your back.”

What if we looked at ourselves and very sincerely said, “I forgive you for everything you ever did that you thought was wrong. I accept and embrace your faults and flaws. You and I, we do not have to be perfect. We can just be who we are in the moment and that’s OK.”

How about it guys? Are we up to it? Are we brave? Can we do it? I think so. Let’s just do it. We won’t even think twice about it… we’ll just go off half cocked and do it! For real!